


my hand’s in your pocket

by kattyshack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (sort of), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Dark Jon Snow, Denial of Feelings, Drama, Dream Sex, F/M, Family, Half-Sibling Incest, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Masturbation, Modern Westeros, Mutual Pining, Possessive Behavior, Romance, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-01-09 03:19:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12267795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack
Summary: When Ned Stark dies under mysterious circumstances, his family is left to pick up the pieces and begin their lives in the darker, crueler Westeros under Lannister rule. Three years later, Catelyn follows her husband to the grave and Robb disappears, and Sansa is left to keep Winterfell and what’s left of their family intact.Overwhelmed by the search for her elder brother and the Boltons’ encroachment on Stark land, Sansa seeks the help of her half-brother. Jon Snow has been studying at the Wall since Ned’s passing, but returns to Winterfell at Sansa’s behest. As the pair shoulder their familial duties and navigate Westeros’ political labyrinth, forbidden feelings are stoked, denied, acknowledged, and explored.(work and chapter titles from “one foot,” by walk the moon)





	1. not a soul up ahead and nothing behind

**Author's Note:**

> a/n: listen… my wips are still in the works but i felt the urge to start something new, too. long story short (and bypassing all the sordid details of my life and how i’m trying to cope with it): i’m going where the muse takes me, and i hope you’ll come along for the ride!! 
> 
> please note: per the tags, this fic features jon and sansa as half-siblings, with no “they’re actually cousins!” or “not related at all!!” plot twist — if that’s not your thing or any point of interest for you At All, i’ll just suggest that you disentangle yourself now. that’s the content warning and i’m sticking to it.

When her father dies, Sansa wonders who’ll be next.

For Eddard Stark had not died of disease or natural causes or some cruel twist of fate — however cruel it might have been — but rather at the behest of his dearest friend’s widow. Cersei Lannister had been accommodating enough while her husband lived, but when he passed, so did her social graces; she no longer needed them. The power was hers, and she exploited it to the fullest extent.

She started slowly but insidiously: The kindly Barristan Selmy was unceremoniously ousted from his post as chief of police, and replaced with the cruel and near-incompetent Meryn Trant. It was one bold move, a single domino that fell all those in its wake, and then Cersei was free to do as she liked, unopposed and unchecked.

Robert’s illegitimate sons were rounded up and given a choice: Either they could pursue a life of modest means and celibacy at the Wall, where they would be trained as soldiers, or at the libraries in Oldtown, where they would study for the priesthood. It didn’t matter to Cersei which they chose, so long as they were out of sight, so as not to challenge her own son’s claim as sovereign. As such, she did not take Ned’s accusations lightly. His very public insistence that her son Joffrey was not fit to take his father’s seat raised Cersei’s hackles and unsheathed her claws, and Ned Stark was dead before anyone could rein the woman in.

Of course, no one knows for sure that it was a Lannister man responsible for the fatal wound to Ned’s heart. But Trant and the town coroner, Dr. Pycelle, had determined it was nothing more than a tragic accident, a stray bullet from a gang fight. Those weren’t uncommon in the slums of the Fleabottom district, after all. But there is a particular gleam in Cersei Lannister’s eye at the funeral that tells Sansa and her siblings all they need to know.

_A Lannister always pays their debts._

The funeral is held on a crisp autumn afternoon. The sky is overcast, the air sharp and a touch balmy as a final testament to the summer that’s just ended. Robb, Bran, and Rickon are handsome in their black suits; Arya tugs at her skirt, agitated with the thing, and Sansa takes her sister’s hand to still it. Jon’s eyes flick from Sansa’s bare knees to the casket as it’s lowered into the ground.

Catelyn sobs for her husband. She remains dignified as ever, but so clearly shattered, too, in such a way that Cersei's pretty tears over Robert three months beforehand could not compare.

At only sixteen, and in the face of her mother’s grief, Sansa quite suddenly realizes what love is:

It’s not quiet streams of tears that a corner of some benign gentleman’s handkerchief could dry. It’s not a trembling lip as you step from an outlandishly expensive hearse after your husband’s coffin. Love is not steady hands and back-to-business when it dies.

No, Sansa thinks as she watches the glossy cherry wood that hides her father disappear at her feet, love is not composure. It is the rivulets of Catelyn Stark's mascara upon her cheeks, and the purple shadows beneath her eyes. It is standing straight while sobs wrack your chest, your spine, but you do not crumble when there are those who still lean on you, because you love them, too.

Love is pain, Sansa realizes with a jolt when her mother hiccups loudly into her shaking hand. Perhaps not while it’s being lived, but losing it might be a greater hardship than never having it at all.

Sansa catches Jon’s eye — he’s standing across the way with their uncle Benjen, apart from his half-siblings so as not to grieve their mother further — because she thinks he understands. His gaze holds her steady, if only for a moment, before it shifts to Catelyn and then back to the scuffed toes of his best shoes. Jon knows better than to look at his stepmother for too long, and better still than to linger upon her prized eldest daughter.

But at the reception afterwards, Catelyn is preoccupied with caterers and well-wishers, and so Jon seeks her daughter out.

“You alright?” he asks in the hallway outside the upstairs bathroom. It’s quiet here, with nothing but the murmurs of mourners and clink of silverware drifting up the staircase to disturb them.

“I’m fine.” Sansa wipes her damp hands down the front of her dress, and Jon’s eyes follow the movement. She rubs her nose next. “How are you?”

Jon shrugs. His tie is loosened, just like Robb’s and Theon’s, and Sansa suspects the lot of them mussed themselves up after taking shots behind the pool house on the way back from the cemetery. Loosened ties and bloodshot eyes made them look more dangerous, and thus more appealing to the girls they’d been making eyes at during the service to distract themselves from their grief.

Jon hadn’t been making eyes at any girls, though. Sansa had only caught him looking at her.

“Fine,” Jon echoes her lie. He stuffs his hands in his trouser pockets. “I only — some of the boys were looking for you. I didn’t want you to be bothered.”

“Who?”

“Joffrey,” he tells her, and Sansa doesn’t miss the twitch of his jaw when he says the name. “Ramsay Bolton asked about you, too.”

Sansa grimaces; she doesn’t mean to, it’s not polite, but Jon rewards her with a small smile and she knows he won’t tell on her.

She and Jon had never been very close — she’d always felt that someone should take her mother’s pride seriously, even if Catelyn loved Jon the best she could in spite of everything — but they had always understood each other. Not in material ways, for Sansa never understood Jon’s reticence and he never understood her proclivity for pretty things, but there was a pull between them that kept bringing them back to each other. Sansa often felt as though Jon could read her mind.

“I told them you had a headache,” he says now. “D’you want to go up to the tower?”

Sansa nods. Jon removes one hand from his pocket and looks as though he might offer it to her, but then he thinks better of it and stuffs it back where it was.

The tower isn’t as extravagant as it sounds; it’s only the slab of roof that juts out from the attic, where the Stark children sneak out to smoke cigarettes and take pulls of the whiskey Theon filched from his father’s liquor cabinet. It was always the cheap kind, so Balon never notices when it’s gone, but it burned their throats and made their heads just as light as anything top-shelf.

Jon does offer his hand this time, to help Sansa through the window, but releases his hold on her as soon as they’re seated, hip to hip and looking out at the darkening grey sky. The color reminds Sansa of Jon’s eyes, but she doesn’t say so aloud. It’s not impolite like her grimace, but it’s not entirely proper, either.

The crickets are just coming out when Jon pulls a flask from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. He unscrews the top and offers it to Sansa, who takes a grateful pull of what she expects to be whiskey again, but is pleasantly surprised to taste the tang of limoncello instead.

“I dunno how you drink this stuff,” Jon says, but there’s a half-smile on his lips when he takes a swig, too. “Arya said it was your favorite, but you’re always drinking Theon’s whiskey with us.”

“I don’t mind it.”

“I know.” Jon nods and passes the flask back to her. His voice is quieter when he says, “But you should get what you want sometimes, Sansa.”

Her answering smirk is self-deprecating. She takes another sip of limoncello, wipes the excess from her lips, and reminds him, “I always get my way.”

Jon laughs; it’s a quiet, almost breathy sound. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. It’ll be different now, though, with Dad…”

“Right.”

Sansa taps her thumbnail against the metal flask. It makes a slight _ding_ that hardly disrupts the silence around them. There’s nothing but the sunset in the distance and the crickets on the ground, and Sansa thinks the whole world could have ended beneath them and neither she nor Jon would have noticed.

But then, she supposes the world had ended today, in a way. Her father was dead and buried, and the future so uncertain without him. Sansa tries not to think of what this will mean for Westeros, and can only hope that some other man will pick up where her father left off — someone brave and honorable, who might fear the Lannisters but will face them, anyway.

She wonders if that’s only a pipe dream, and drinks from the flask again.

“Uncle Benjen’s leaving to go back to the Wall next week,” Jon says. He’s looking at his hands, twisted together in his lap. “I think I might go with him.”

There’s a lump in Sansa’s throat that she doesn’t trust herself to speak around, so she nods and takes another drink. She isn’t surprised at the news, not even at how empty it makes her feel. Jon’s departure isn’t out of the blue — he and Ned had been discussing his future as well as Robb’s, now that they were both nearly twenty and long ready to spread their wings — but now, after this afternoon especially, Sansa doesn’t relish the notion of losing more family, even if it’s only temporary.

“The programme’s only four years,” Jon continues. “Then I can stay there, or I could come back and join the police, maybe. If the Lannisters are still around, I’m sure the force will be wanting for someone decent, at least.”

Sansa tries for a smile. “You’re more than decent, Jon.”

He tries for one, too. “Thank you, Sansa.”

Silence settles once more. There is more that could be said, but none of it is necessary. She and Jon understand each other, Sansa thinks again, and perhaps for now that will have to be enough.

The sun is tucking away into the horizon, in a streak of white and orange that cuts the grey sky, when Jon expels a long sigh, puts an arm around Sansa, and tugs her close into his side. His breath is warm on her temple when he plants a kiss there and murmurs into her hairline, “I’m going to miss you, pretty girl.”

Sansa sniffles, but doesn’t let the tears come. She’s shed far enough for her father’s memory, and Jon, at least, will come home. She needn’t cry for his absence — he’s not going anywhere, not really, not the way their father had. There’s not a lot of comfort in that, but there is some, there is enough.

The wind bites when the sun sets, and it ushers in the smell of rain. Sansa rests her chin on her half-brother’s shoulder and whispers in his ear, “I’m going to miss you, too.”


	2. i remember the fight and i forget the pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: ages of the stark children from here on out (unless i decide to write in a birthday? idk but for now, here’s the reference): 
> 
> robb & jon: 23  
> sansa: 20  
> arya: 17  
> bran: 16  
> rickon: 12

_three years later:_

The screen door shudders in its frame when Sansa shoulders it open. She drops her keys and the armful of groceries onto the kitchen counter, then heads upstairs and down the hall, shrugging out of her cardigan and toeing off her shoes on her way to the master bath. The corridor is mercifully dark after the onslaught of the sunrise outside, the house soothingly still after a long night at Baelish’s club.

Four months ago, Sansa had taken her parents’ bedroom when her mother died, and then the job at Baelish’s a month later when Robb vanished without a word and nary a trace.

She’s eager to scrub the stench of cigar smoke from her skin. She’s just as eager for something more substantial than a wilted salad, Ros’ homemade jerky, and Shae’s long islands, but the boys and Arya will be up soon and she’ll need to make them breakfast, too.

They’re perfectly capable of scrounging up dry cereal and toast, Sansa supposes as she welcomes the hot shower spray. But the last time her siblings tried to give her a break, it ended with a grease fire, Arya’s singed eyebrows, a burn on one of Bran’s leg braces, and a spilled carton of orange juice all down Rickon’s new pajamas. While Sansa appreciated the effort, she’d insisted on taking over the household chores from there on out.

When she heads back to the kitchen, all evidence of the night washed away, it’s to find the groceries put away and replaced by several bags of takeaway from Hot Pie’s. Arya grins at her from her seat at the breakfast bar, where she’s already tucking into a hot pepper omelette.

“Jaqen gave me a raise,” she explains through a mouthful of scrambled egg and steak. “Thought I’d treat us. I deserve a damn omelette after scrubbing all those yoga mats, too.”

She passes a steaming styrofoam cup to her sister, who takes a long, grateful swallow. The coffee burns her tongue, but Sansa can’t resist a fresh French vanilla after living off off-brand grounds for months at a time.

“I could make you an omelette.”

“You deserve a break, too,” Arya points out. She flips open another box and pushes it across the counter. “Here, got you crepes.”

Sansa rips a pastry in half with her teeth and moans at the sweetness. “God, but you’re a miracle.”

“I know, thanks.” Arya digs into the turkey bacon next and asks through a bite, “Hear anything good at Baelish’s, then?”

“Nothing new.” Sansa wipes powdered sugar from her lips and reaches for her coffee again. “Margaery came in during the dinner rush, but she’d talked to her grandmother yesterday morning and Robb’s not been through Highgarden as far as Olenna knows — and she knows _everything_. Margaery’s pursuing other avenues in the meantime. She’ll be by Winterfell next weekend to let us know what she hears, even if it’s nothing. She’s bringing tequila.”

“Twist my arm, why don’t you?” There’s a mischievous glint in Arya’s big grey eyes, but it goes out in an instant. “Bolton swing by again?”

Sansa scowls and tears another crepe. “Ramsay’s in nearly every night. Apparently he’s taken a shine to Myranda, but that doesn’t stop him from pestering me.”

The Boltons had been sniffing around the Starks’ land since Ned died. The family patriarch, Roose, had made Catelyn several handsome offers for Winterfell, but she had refused every one.

“This is our home,” she’d told Sansa. “We don’t need the money. Even if we did, I hear what the Boltons do with the land they’ve got and I won’t let them desecrate Winterfell, too.”

But Roose and his son, Ramsay, had only grown more bold since Catelyn’s death after a short stretch of illness, and more still when they noticed Robb’s absence. Ramsay had called on Sansa almost every day since, in efforts to wear her down or frighten her into submission, but Sansa had denied him at every turn.

“You don’t scare me,” she’d told him only a few hours ago, when he’d cornered her in a back corridor at Baelish’s. “So stop trying.”

Ramsay had smiled, slow and sinister, and it never did reach his wide blue eyes.

“I’ve always thought you were a pretty girl, Sansa,” he’d said as he toyed with a loose strand of her hair. His tone might have been conversational, flirtatious even, if it weren’t for the way he whispered the words. “I’m sure we could come to an agreement — one that would allow you to stay at Winterfell, even, whether you give the estate willingly or not.”

Sansa didn’t miss the threat, but she wouldn’t pique her sister’s temper by revealing the details just yet. But Arya is far too clever to miss the twitch in Sansa’s eye, and she knows the sort of man Ramsay Bolton is. Her fingers tighten on the handle of her knife and she cuts into her omelette with renewed vigor, projecting Ramsay’s pasty, smirking face onto her eggs.

“We haven’t heard from Robb in months. We need to find him.” Arya doesn’t like to think where or how they might find their brother, but entertaining the worst possible scenarios won’t bring them any closer to the truth. “But until we do…”

She shakes her head, looking much older than her seventeen years. “Sansa, we need to tell Jon.”

“I know.” Sansa rubs her forehead to ease the oncoming headache. She takes another bracing swig of coffee. “I’ve been thinking the same. When’s the last time you heard from him?”

“Before Robb fucked off to god-knows-where,” Arya says callously, because it’s easier than thinking the worst. “Before Mum got sick, too. He doesn’t know, or else he’d’ve come back on his own.”

Sansa nods. Jon still has another year of his training programme at the Wall, but he’s under no obligation to finish it or even stay there. But as long as he remains, contact with family is regulated and minimized. Since his departure, they hadn’t had but a dozen letters and far less than half that in phone calls. Robb had visited him once, but that was two years ago now.

Sansa hasn’t seen him since the morning he left with their uncle Benjen, and when she allows herself to think on it she misses him terribly. She’d always known that Jon understood her in a singular way that no one else could match, but it was only when he’d gone that she realized he had taken a piece of her with him. She’s never said as much aloud; she can hardly explain it to herself, much less anyone else. Even Arya, whose own relationship with Jon was such that you’d think they were twins rather than half-siblings separated by five years of age, had puzzled over what Sansa and Jon shared — and that was _without_ Sansa trying to explain something she didn’t understand herself.

Perhaps it’s only that Jon is one of the few decent men she knows — a number that’s even fewer now that her father is dead and Robb gone. Those she’d met during her tenure at Baelish’s thus far hadn’t proven to be more than lecherous, greedy animals who touch without asking and take without giving. Sansa is hardly more than a cocktail waitress and even she’s known too many wandering hands and foul mouths.

She humors them only for the money her family needs, but she’d never had to humor Jon for anything. His eyes were soft, his touch hesitant and gentle when he gave it, his words unintrusive and kind. He was an honest man in a dishonest country, not without his hard edges but it was the edges which ensured his survival. Sansa can’t begrudge him of what others might perceive to be flaws, not when all he’d ever wanted was to keep her safe. And now here she is, raw and vulnerable, charged with caring for her young siblings without her parents’ guidance or Robb’s help, and there are unfriendly faces around every corner.

“We can’t send a letter,” Sansa decides now. “I’m sure Trant or Slynt or _someone’s_ reading the post, especially ours. Just because we don’t know where Robb’s gone doesn’t mean Cersei or Joffrey should know that. I’d rather them think we know perfectly well and that he’ll be back any day. And Jon wouldn’t leave the programme unless we absolutely needed him. We can’t tell him all that in a letter.”

“You should go,” Arya says. She dunks a rolled-up pancake into a hot cup of syrup, and hands it to Sansa, who stuffs it in her mouth with a bit of bacon. “You’ve got a couple days off work after tonight, right? I could stab my own eyes out and Jaqen wouldn’t cut back my hours.”

Sansa nods again, but frowns as she calculates the journey. They’ve only got Robb’s old Mustang — he’d left it behind, wherever he’d gone. The station wagon was in the shop and frankly Sansa doesn’t know when they’ll be able to afford to get it out.

“I can’t leave you without a car,” she says, but Arya shrugs off the concern.

“Gendry’ll lend us the truck. He can afford to take some time off work while you’re gone, too, in case the Boltons send one of their guys around.”

Gendry is a trustworthy lad, steadfast and loyal to Arya, who had met him during kickboxing a few years back. He was an orphan, supposedly, but he’d grown up in the boys’ home having never known his parents, so Arya had decided that he was part of their family now. All things considered, Sansa is glad of their relationship — whatever precisely it entails, and she has her suspicions that the two are toeing a thin line between friendship and something else.

Like Jon, Gendry is one of the few decent men Sansa knows, and she’s content to leave him at Winterfell with her siblings in her short absence.

“I’ll leave after work tonight,” she decides. She and Arya have always been efficient at coming to decisions that needed to be made, and this hadn’t been much of a difficult one to begin with.

“What time’s your shift?”

“I need to be there by six tonight, and with any luck I’ll be out by one. It’s about a twelve-hour drive to the Wall,” Sansa admits, “but you know I’m always wired after work. I should make it okay.”

“Stop at a motel if you get tired,” Arya instructs. She points the bottle of catsup threateningly at her sister before pouring a considerable amount over what’s left of her eggs. “Or I’ll kick your arse.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Sansa grins, and drops a kiss to the top of her sister’s head.

 

* * *

 

Over the past three years, Jon had found plenty of things to dislike about training at the Wall: the early hours and stiff cots, the communal showers, the bland meals and drafty corridors, Alliser Thorne’s harsh instruction and crass judgments, and some of his fellow trainees, too; there was certainly no love lost between Jon and the likes of Tanner and Rast. But he’d learned to deal with all of it, and what he couldn’t reconcile he had simply grown accustomed to.

All, that is, except Melisandre.

She was called the witch doctor at the Wall. A foreign woman of indeterminate age, Melisandre tended to wounds and mixed medicines, and dabbled in herbology and prophecy. She seemed to delight in making the men nervous, either with her alleged all-seeing eye or often enough with her sexual advances. Jon put no stock in the former and had denied the latter. Plenty of the Watchmen have indulged her and themselves in the past, but something about her left Jon unsettled.

There was something about her… Jon had never been able to put his finger on it, or perhaps he simply didn’t allow himself to. But there was something about the shade of her red hair, auburn in the sunrise when the men woke for training, crimson in the sunset when they retired for supper, that insisted Jon keep his distance.

He doesn’t like to think about the why. It reminds him of… Well. Jon shakes the thought again. He needn’t be reminded of anything to know that no good could come from a tryst with the witch doctor.

But Jon’s rejection doesn’t stop her from seeking him out.

He’s playing gin rummy with Edd when Melisandre sweeps into the breakroom. Grenn and Pyp, who are playing their own round of gin at the table next to them, perk up. Edd coughs and Jon shifts uncomfortably in his seat.

“Jon Snow.” Dark eyes bore into him and Jon feels as though his bones are turning to ash.

Melisandre had referred to him by his full name since his first day at the Wall. Most of the occupants had assumed him to be a Stark, like his uncle, but Jon had kept his mother’s name and Melisandre had known. Perhaps Jon should have put more faith in her prophecies, but he’d convinced himself that she’d only snuck a look at the registration forms and used the information as some sort of power play to keep the new recruits in line. No one wants to insult a witch doctor, after all.

“I’ve seen something in the flames that may be of interest to you,” Melisandre tells him now.

“Is it a fully-cooked meal?” Edd wants to know before Jon can say a word. “Or are we having cold stew for supper again, d’you know?”

Melisandre shoots him a look, but it’s the only answer she’ll give him before she turns her attention back to Jon.

“There is a girl on her way here, to the Wall, to you,” she says. “She’s escaping from something, searching for something, I do not know — only that she is a girl in grey on a dying horse, and she is on her way to you.”

The proclamation is met with silence. Grenn and Pyp exchange glances and half-formed smirks. Jon blinks. And finally, Edd snorts and asks, “Who the fuck’s riding a horse this far North?”

The men are overcome by a fit of laughter. Melisandre scowls and Jon suppresses a smile. He doesn’t know what Melisandre’s on about but, whatever it is, it must be just another one of her parlour tricks. There’s no girl — whether she be in grey or black or blue, on a dying horse or strapped to a jetpack — looking for him, no girl seeking him out.

Jon hasn’t seen many women since coming to the Wall; he hadn’t had a girl for awhile now. The Watchmen weren’t supposed to have girls at all, but they all did if such an opportunity arose. Near the end of his first year, there had been a caravan of travelers on their way to the Free Folk reservations who set up camp nearby. He’d had a fling with one of them, Ygritte, but she’d left with her companions before he even knew how he really felt about her. He thinks he might have loved her, or could have, but little grief was spent on the loss of the possibility.

Jon’s not sorry for it, but in truth his heart was always with Winterfell; he doesn’t know that he’d ever meet a girl who could compare to home. It was part of the reason he’d left for the Wall in the first place.

“She should arrive any day now,” Melisandre continues, pride clearly wounded but she spares little attention to Edd, Pyp, and Grenn’s guffaws. “You’d best be ready for her, Jon Snow — she has much to ask of you.”

“Lucky man,” Grenn chortles, and Pyp winks.

Jon offers a grin but shakes his head, dismissing the notion. There are no girls in his life, excepting his sisters, but what could Arya or Sansa mean by travelling the distance to reach him? They have no need of him — Arya understands his need for independence, for a life of his own, and Sansa…

The thought trails, hovering, lingering. Melisandre’s gaze is boring into him still, and Jon refuses to meet her eye. If he were a man who believed in magic, he might think she could sneak into his mind and steal the secrets he intends to take to the grave.

But Melisandre’s hair catches the light of the dying sun that seeps through the window, and Jon thinks of Sansa when he told himself not to. And over the sounds of his chuckling friends, the witch doctor tells him once more:

_She is a girl in grey on a dying horse, and she is on her way to you._


	3. a desert in my blood, a storm in your eyes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: so hey heed that “half-sibling incest” tag and don’t say i didn’t warn you

The Mustang’s engine starts coughing about an hour from the Wall.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Sansa growls, and presses her foot on the gas. Maybe if she guns it, she’ll make it to Jon before the car dies entirely.

It wouldn’t be the worst thing if she had to walk, not now that she’s so close, but she’s not exactly dressed for roaming the abandoned dirt roads. She’s still in her work clothes — nothing but a skin-tight black romper with a gold zipper down the front — and her long grey cardigan does little for her modesty. She’d stopped at every service station along the way for coffee and stale sandwiches, and hid her blushing face with her hood whenever the clerk eyed her with either judgment or interest.

She glances at her reflection in the rearview mirror. Bloodshot eyes and shadows underneath, hair a mess of waves around her pallid face. _I look like I’ve been turning tricks all night_ , she muses, but by the fourth rest stop she hadn’t cared so much.

 _I’m never going to see these people again_ , she decides. _Fuck ‘em._

Sansa cranks the windows down. The air is thick with humidity, and the temperature had been rising every hour; she definitely doesn’t want to walk in this. So she pushes her brother’s Mustang harder and doesn’t think about _what if it dies?_ because she’s getting to Jon whether it does or not.

So she lets the worry go, and lets the hot wind whip her face and dust her hair with the smell of smoke and summer outside.

When the Wall comes into view, the relief Sansa had been keeping at bay spills forth. There is nothing foreboding about the weathered brick, the worn, creaky porches, the dark turrets and high fences — not to Sansa, not when she knows that her half-brother is somewhere inside those seemingly impenetrable walls.

The word _salvation_ comes to mind, just as the Mustang’s engine dies.

The car chokes, coughs, and halts with such a loud _bang!_ that Sansa’s ears pop. Smoke billows forth and Sansa kicks the door open, pushing herself out and coughing all the while. The car had brought her as far as she needed it to, but all the same Sansa can’t help but kick the front tire in frustration.

“Stupid — fucking — piece — of — shit —” she mutters, uncharacteristically mouthy, but she’s running on no sleep, too much caffeine, and a lack of patience.

Out of the corner of her eye, Sansa notices the watchmen who had been roused by the Mustang’s commotion. Curious eyes regard her from a few of the outbuildings and, not knowing what else to do to assuage them (perhaps she hadn’t expected to make it this far, after all, because why else wouldn’t she have a plan?), Sansa waves, her smile just as weak and weary as she is.

She’s about to ask the nearest man — this one tall and reedy, with stringy hair and the name _Tollett_ stitched onto his shirtfront — where she might find Jon Snow, when the door to the main building swings open behind her.

Sansa turns just as the wooden porch creaks, cutting into the still summer air like a knife, to find just the man she’d come for, and he’s looking at her as though he’s seen a ghost.

Her smile widens at the sight of him, and there’s nothing weak or weary about her now, no matter the shock in Jon’s widened grey eyes as they lock unblinkingly upon her.

“Hello, Jon.”

Sansa’s voice seems to break him free of his trance, and Jon takes the steps two at a time to get to her. It’s a wonder he doesn’t trip in his haste, for his eyes never leave her; it’s as if nothing around them exists — not his fellow watchmen, nor the hot white glare of the sun or the cawing of crows in the not-so-far-off distance.

The world has ceased its spinning.

Jon catches her in his arms so fiercely that they nearly topple to the ground, and perhaps they would have if Sansa hadn’t clung to him, feet planted firmly on the dusty ground.

“Sansa —” Jon breathes her name like a prayer before bed. He pulls back, just far enough to look at her, hands cradling her face. He hadn’t expected this, hadn’t anticipated _her_ , and now that she’s here Jon realizes he’d feared, deep down, that he’d never see her again.

It’s a foolish fear, unfounded, but it doesn’t matter anymore. She’s here, and Jon feels so much closer to home.

He kisses her everywhere — her forehead, her temples, her cheeks, and for half a second on her sweet chapped lips. And for that moment, that one, single catch of breath when his lips bruise hers, she pushes back and Jon thinks — wild, unbidden — that he could take that half-second and stretch it out into forever.

He tells himself it’s because he missed her, because she’s family, _his own blood_ , and when Sansa hugs him again — tighter and longer, her face buried in the crook of his neck and the smell of her hair overwhelming him — he ignores that little voice inside his head that calls him a liar.

 

* * *

 

When they finally manage to disentangle themselves, Jon sets a few of the boys to the task of fixing the Mustang. Most of the watchmen are aces with cars, Jon among them, but he’s not about to leave Sansa alone when she’d come all this way for him.

A quarter of an hour later finds them alone on an overstuffed couch in the rec room, warm beers between them, and she tells him nearly everything: About Catelyn’s death, Robb’s disappearance —

“He left his car?” Jon says, although obviously he did. But Robb loved that stupid fucking car, almost as much as he loved his own family, and Jon can’t imagine what would have made him leave it all behind.

“Yeah. Good thing, too, even if it is shit, because the wagon’s in the shop,” Sansa tells him. “I can’t afford to get it fixed. They’re storing it, more or less, out of the goodness of Davos’ heart.”

Jon’s brow furrows further, his concern growing with every passing word. “You’re out of money?”

“We’d been on the fence since Dad died. Mum didn’t want us to worry, but…” Sansa sighs, frustrated, and takes a long pull of beer to steady herself. She doesn’t even like beer, but she’s in no position to turn her nose up at any sort of booze when she’s this wound-up. “Well, it became rather painfully obvious when she died, too. There’s not much left. Arya and I’ve got jobs. We’ve got the trusts, too, but we can’t access those ‘til we’re twenty-five. I’ve been talking to the lawyer and Luwin’s doing what he can. But so far, no dice.”

Jon nods. He’d had control of his own trust fund since he was twenty, when he’d told Ned he’d decided to train at the Wall. It had been a “just in case” scenario, but Jon hadn’t touched most of it. He hadn’t much need to. He doesn’t mention this to Sansa just yet; he knows she’ll refuse to take it — because that’s what she does, refuses help even as she seeks it — and he’s not in the mood to argue with her right now. Not after so long apart, not when their family had lost so much and he’d only just gotten her back.

“We can take care of the Mustang before we head out,” Jon reassures her. “It’s not in the worst shape. Fixable, at least. I’d bet we’ll be on the road by evening.”

Sansa worries her bottom lip between her teeth. She’d come this far, but now she’s begun to fret that she’s asking too much of Jon, no matter how much they need him back at Winterfell. She’d skimmed over the more sordid details, so he knows about Roose’s interest in the land but not about Ramsay’s thinly-veiled threats; he knows that she’s got a job but she’d purposely neglected to say where. Stark men don’t take kindly to the likes of Petyr Baelish, after all. And while Sansa certainly can’t blame them for the judgment — she holds it herself — they need the money, not to mention the contacts and intel she gathers during her shifts at Petyr’s club.

All of this will come to light once Jon’s home with them again, Sansa knows. But first she needs to _make sure_ that she’s not asking too much of him.

“Are you sure you want to leave?” she presses. “You’ve only got a year left, and I know you can find work with three years at the Wall under your belt, but… I hate to think I’m disrespecting Uncle Benjen’s memory somehow, taking you away like this.”

“Sansa…” Jon puts a placating hand on her knee, but releases his grip just as quickly. “Benjen only brought me back with him because it was what I wanted. He always said it was up to me. Even when he got sick last year, he told me not to feel obligated to do what was expected of me here. I think he knew, somewhere down the line, that I’d be needed back home. That’s more important. Especially now, with your mum and Robb…”

He shakes his head. “I can’t let you do this by yourself.”

Sansa says nothing, only worries her lip some more and tucks her hair nervously behind her ears. Jon wishes he could offer more comfort, but something twists in his gut and stops him from reaching out. His gaze is fixed on the teeth marks on her lip and he remembers the sweet, yielding dryness of her mouth beneath his own — an innocent press, a familial kiss, he thinks; that’s all it was.

_(Even if it was, is that all you wanted it to be?)_

Later, when Sansa’s sleeping off some of her exhaustion in Jon’s cot (“I don’t want to stop at a motel, I’d rather just drive all the way through,” she’d said, but Jon knows full well they’ll be stopping because like hell is he going to drive a straight twelve hours, and he won’t have Sansa pushing herself like that, either), he heads outside for a smoke and to check the boys’ progress on the car.

The sun is dying out, the last of its light catching on Melisandre’s hair across the yard. She regards Jon appraisingly, knowingly; he ignores her in favor of his cigarette.

He’s hardly halfway through the thing before Edd trudges up the porch steps to join him. He lights up, too, and after a few drags asks the question that had been lingering over all their heads since Sansa’s arrival that afternoon:

“That your girl in grey in a dying Mustang, then?”

“She’s not _my girl_ ,” Jon contests. He blows a few smoke rings, then sticks the cig back between his teeth. “My sister.”

Edd cocks his head, then shoots Jon a sidelong glance. “If that’s what you say, sir.”

He should feel shame at the look in his friend’s eye, Jon knows, and worse yet he knows that he should feel it further when he doesn’t feel it at all. He tells himself that it’s because he’s done nothing wrong. He tells himself that he’s his father’s son, and Stark men don’t lie, and he shoves the rest of it to the back of his mind.

 _It doesn’t matter_ , Jon insists, without quite knowing what _it_ is or what he means by it. But he tells himself again: _It doesn’t matter. I’m going home._

 

* * *

 

_His hand slides from her elbow to her hip, eliciting from her a small, contented breath, and she snuggles closer. Her hips are flush with his, so he’s sure she can feel him harden against the soft swell of her arse. She’s soft all over, warm and sweet. He feels a burst of salt upon his tongue as he imagines tasting her; an ache pulses in his chest, his cock, at the thought._

_His hand moves again, sliding once more from her hip across her stomach and down, down…_

_He cups her through thin cotton shorts and she immediately arches into his touch, hips rotating in time with his searching fingers. His own hips follow her lead; he’s grinding his erection into her arse while he touches her, pressing his palm insistently against her clit through that barely-there swatch of material separating them._

_It shouldn’t feel as good as it does, but he buries his nose in the lushness of her hair and inhales, deep and slow even as his touch and his hips pick up their pace._

_He wants to be inside her. She thrusts more forcefully into his hand, and he slips his fingers into the waistband of her shorts to give her what she’s looking for, to give himself what he wants — her warm, wanting cunt._

_Callused fingertips press against her mound, blunt nails grazing her short, wiry curls, and he ruts against her arse and she moans, long and low and the sweetest fucking thing he’s ever heard, he doesn’t want her to stop, never wants her to stop, and she doesn’t, the sounds tearing from her throat, louder and longer, she’s so wet under his touch, and she sighs his name — “Jon” —_

His eyes snap open.

The motel room is dark, the only light coming from the alarm clock’s luminous green numbers that pronounce the early (late?) hour: _2:17 A.M._

But despite the darkness, there is no mistaking who is beside Jon in the bed, whose back is pressed against his front, whose hips are undulating against the hand that’s still working at her underneath her sleep shorts…

“Shit,” Jon mumbles groggily. If he were properly awake, he might succumb to the panic that’s stirring somewhere deep within him; as it is, though, he doesn’t remove his hand. She’s so soft, pliant, _wanting_ — how can he refuse her?

He can tell by her breathing that Sansa is as awake as he is — not entirely, but almost as if they’re both merely caught in some state of sleepwalking — and she’s not stopping, either.

 _She needs this_ , he thinks. _She needs me._

They needn’t speak of it later. But right now, he can give them this — one moment of solace, of comfort, of freedom, before dawn breaks and their harsh reality comes to claim them. The late (early?) hour can be blamed, their loneliness and exhaustion, their repressed fear of what might come to pass when they arrive at Winterfell, if they never find Robb or if they do, if the Boltons come to call and they have no one else to turn to… It can all lay blame to the way Jon touches her tonight.

 _Just once_ , he swears to himself. _Just this once._

He wishes he could say that was the truth.

But he won’t think on it now; he couldn’t, even if he’d wanted to. All he can think of is _her_.

Sansa’s arm reaches behind her, winds around Jon’s neck and her fingers twist into his curls. Her free hand joins his, encouraging his touch. He grinds into her more forcefully, and her answering moan breaks the stillness of the room while he muffles his own in the slope of her neck. His mouth latches on, sucking, biting, feasting on her smooth, sweet skin; if they only have tonight, this moment, Jon wants to see a bruise on her neck come morning to prove that _something_ was real.

They needn’t speak of it, but he needs to _know_.

Sansa lets him litter her neck with evidence of this, their sin — _their sweet, sweet salvation_ — and angles her neck, offering him more. He rears up to reach more of her, his fingers slipping inside of her, done with the teasing and ready to make her come. His hips snap against her arse, recklessly, feverishly; he wants to _fuck_ her —

As the thought passes through his mind, clinging and demanding, Sansa turns in his arms. She fuses her mouth to his, lips parted, tongue seeking his, and he responds at once. There is nothing tender in their kiss — only urgency, violence, their crashing, crushing mouths a tempest in the solemn silence of this motel room.

He fingers her clit and she comes, gasping his name into his mouth, but Jon doesn’t stop when her cunt clenches around him, and neither does she. Jon pushes his hands up her shirt to palm her breasts, and Sansa tugs his shorts down and then her own.

Neither ask if the other is sure — their desperation speaks for them, loud as a thunderstorm — and Sansa straddles him without a word, save breathy whispers of his name: _“Jon, Jon, Jon —”_

They might be caught up in a dream, Jon thinks in a daze, and wonders if she feels the same.

Sansa sinks down onto him and he sits up, cradling her to his chest as he thrusts into her tight, wet heat, meeting her rolling hips with urgent pushes inside of her. He yanks her shirt upwards, a hand kneading one breast as he tastes the other. _Sweet_ , everything about her is sweet, and there’s that tang of sweat, salt, that tang he’ll taste between her legs before this night is through.

He touches her hard, fucks her fast, sucks her roughly. If he can only give them tonight, he wants _everything_.

(He’d been a fool to ever tell himself otherwise, to pretend that she was a sister to him, no matter their blood, when he wanted her as something else entirely.)

(But he’s not supposed to be thinking about that right now.)

They needn’t speak of it later, and they won’t speak on it now, either. They say nothing but moans and sighs of the other’s name. Filthy words and tender adorations flit through Jon’s mind as he fucks into her, one hand working her clit to make her come again, but he doesn’t say any of them aloud. There is nothing but harsh breaths and eager hands between them, his cock taking taking _taking_ her and her cunt driving him mad. Her tightly-wound muscles relax beneath his hands, his mouth.

 _She needs me_ , Jon thinks again, and he groans her name into her ear, sucks the lobe between his lips, as he comes inside of her.

( _Just this once_ , he tells himself again.)

(But he’s a fucking liar.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n: lmao it’s so cute how i thought i could do slow burn. anyway let’s just call it like... emotional slow burn, but they still get to fuck. see, i can be reasonable.


End file.
